Volume 75 / Part 4 — COUNT SIGISMUND’S WILL.

The theatrical season in Paris, now at its height, has not yet been marked by the production of any particularly successful pieces. At about this time last year, the clever comedy of Lady Tartuffe afforded agreeable occupation to the critics, and abundant amusement to the town. At the Gymnase, the Fils de Famille, of which two versions have since been produced upon the London stage, and Philiberte, a sparkling three-act comedy in verse, full of wit, but rather Régence in its tone and style, nightly filled the house with select and gratified audiences. L’Honneur et l’Argent, M. Ponsard’s respectable and proper, but, in our opinion, wearisome play, had a triumphant run at the Odeon; whilst, at the Vaudeville, the Lady with the Camelias, who, objectionable though she was in some respects, was certainly, as far as talent went, immeasurably superior to her various imitators and successors, drew all Paris to her seductive boudoir. This winter no play of decided merit and importance has been produced at any theatre. In more than one instance, attempts have been made to proclaim the success of a piece immense, when in reality it was most moderate; and, at the Gymnase, Diane de Lys has really had a considerable run; but this has been owing to extraneous circumstances, and to the excellence of the acting, much more than to any intrinsic merits of the play, which derived a sort of scandalous interest from a generally-credited report that the author, Alexander Dumas the younger, had merely dramatised an adventure of his own—altering, however, the catastrophe; for the play closes with the death of the lover, shot by the offended husband. Rumour went so far as to point to a foreign lady of rank as the original of the Duchess Diana, and the playwright was blamed for his indiscretion. Whether there were grounds for such censure, or whether the tale was a mere ingenious invention, industriously circulated by the author’s friends to give a spurious popularity to a rather amusing but very worthless piece, it is hard to decide—the one case being quite as probable as the other. The Gymnase, however, boasts of its Diana as a signal triumph—which she may be to its treasury, although in other respects she does the theatre no great credit, beyond displaying an excellent cast and admirable acting. That agreeable theatre needs something to console it for the loss of its most valuable and accomplished comedian, Bressant, summoned by the higher powers from the scene of his numerous triumphs to the classic boards of the Française. There he had the good taste to make his first appearance in a play of Molière’s in preference to the less sterling class of comedy with which he is more familiar; and, both by his acting, and by the enthusiastic greeting he met from a crowded house, he at once proved himself a valuable accession to the talent and popularity of the first French theatre. That establishment just now has greater need of good new plays than of good new actors. It is unfortunate in its authors, and the drama droops under the imperial régime. Alexander Dumas—whose outrageous vanity and fanfaronades, daily displayed in the columns of the new journal, the Mousquetaire, which he owns and edits, have lately made him the laughingstock of Paris,—after writing two five-act historical plays in about as many days each, and having them both accepted by the committee, but prohibited before performance—probably because the authorities did not think the most important theatre in France a fit stage for such mountebank feats of rapid writing—has been fain to console himself (supposing his egregious self-conceit not to have set him above all need of consolation) by the cordial reception of a one-act comedy called Romulus, which has both humour and character. He has boasted of this little success almost as much as of the merits of his two great failures, the interdicted plays; has published the piece (the idea of which is derived from a passage in one of Auguste La Fontaine’s tales) in the feuilleton of his paper, where he also printed monstrous stories about his having written it in some wonderfully short space of time. But this clever silly man has made himself such a reputation as a Munchausen that none now believe him; and, moreover, it is very well known in Paris that the piece in question was planned, and in great part written, by an accomplished French actor, much esteemed in England, to whose cultivated taste and extensive reading some of the best dramatists of the day have on various occasions been indebted for advice and assistance, which they have not all been so slow as Mr Dumas to acknowledge.

The expectations of many persons, conversant with the relative merits of the principal living writers for the French stage, were lately raised high by the announcement of a five-act comedy from the united pens of two of the most successful of these, Messrs Emile Augier and Jules Sandeau. Both of these gentlemen have distinguished themselves as dramatists, although M. Sandeau is perhaps best known as the author of some very clever and agreeable novels. Indeed, since the regretted decease of Charles de Bernard, few have been more successful in that branch of literature. His style is that in which modern French writers have best succeeded—the roman de mœurs, or novel of society, whose attraction and interest depend rather upon accurate delineation and delicate satire of the habits, follies, and foibles of the time, than in startling situations and complicated intrigues. The late Charles de Bernard, to whose charming talent we some years ago devoted an article, and whose collected works have just received the well-deserved honour of posthumous republication, was an adept in the style, and was also one of the most inventive writers of his day. Most of his novels and tales display, in addition to a refined and extensive knowledge of French society and character, much ingenuity of plot and originality of incident. Of the same school, Jules Sandeau has more pathos and sentiment, less originality and wit. Like that of most novelists who are also dramatists, his dialogue is terse, spirited, and life-like, although less pointed and sparkling than that of the author of Gerfaut. Occasionally he reminds us of that clever whimsical writer, Alphonse Karr, but of Karr in his happiest moods, when he abjures triviality, and produces such novels as Genevieve and La Famille Alain. One of the favourite stock-pieces at the Comédie Française, Mademoiselle de la Seiglière, is by Sandeau, founded on his own novel of the same name. Another of his tales, La Chasse au Roman, he dramatised conjointly with Augier, and the piece brought out the other day, La Pierre de Touche—The Touchstone—is also founded on a novel by Sandeau, entitled Un Héritage. How is it, many have asked, that, with an excellent subject—that of a highly popular romance—to work upon, M. Sandeau and the witty and experienced author of Gabrielle, Philiberte, and other justly successful plays, have produced a comedy which has been more or less hissed every night of its performance, and which, instead of awakening the sympathies or exciting the admiration of the public, has produced an impression so manifestly unfavourable, that the authors deemed it necessary to publish a letter in explanation and vindication—a letter the publishers of the play have reproduced in the form of a preface? Before replying to this question, or sketching the plot of the play, we will give a slight outline of the novel on which it is founded. Our readers will hardly have forgotten another of M. Sandeau’s novels, Sacs et Parchemins, of which we some time ago gave an account.^[4] Those who have read, with the amused interest it could hardly fail to excite, M. Sandeau’s account of the vaulting ambition of the retired draper Levrault, and of the desperate and ludicrous expedients of the ruined Viscount de Montflanquin, in his French Wolf’s Crag, will not be unwilling to follow the same writer upon German ground, to the ancient castle of Hildesheim, and into the humble abode of Franz Müller, the musician of Munich. We will briefly glance at the spirited and characteristic opening chapters of Un Héritage.

It was a great day for Master Gottlieb Kaufmann, notary in the little German town of Mühlstadt. Count Sigismund Hildesheim was just dead, and his will was to be opened in presence of his assembled relatives. Gottlieb, attired in suitable sables, the silver buckles of his shoes replaced by others of burnished steel, fidgetted to and fro between his study and his office, his office and his drawing-room, scolding his clerks, sending away clients, and watching the clock, whose lazy hands, he thought, crept more slowly than usual round the dial. Noon was the hour fixed for the reading of the will, and as yet it was but nine. It was an anxious morning for the worthy notary. The very pig-tail that dangled from his nape quivered with impatience. The cause of his excitement was his doubt whether the heir to the castle and fine estate of Hildesheim would continue to employ him. There were other notaries at Mühlstadt, and all were eager to secure so rich a client. Master Gottlieb had spared no pains to retain the lucrative employment. His drawing-room chairs, stripped of the cases that usually protected them from the pranks of the flies, were drawn round a table spread with an old scarlet velvet cover; near this table, another chair, elevated upon a temporary platform, seemed to preside over the absent assembly. From time to time, Master Gottlieb seated himself in it, studied his gestures and attitude, and contemplated his reflection in a glass, endeavouring to combine regret and obsequiousness in the expression of his habitually jovial physiognomy. His face was to do double duty—to deplore the departed and offer his services to the survivors. Further to propitiate the clients he desired to secure, Master Gottlieb—himself of a convivial turn, fond of a cool bottle and a merry catch—had prepared, in an adjoining room, an elegant collation. On a cloth of dazzling whiteness were temptingly displayed cold meats, fragrant fruits, and antique flasks, dim with venerable dust. The notary had spared nothing worthily to honour the memory and regale the heirs of the departed Count.

Count Sigismund Hildesheim had passed, almost from his youth upwards, for an oddity, an original, slightly crazed, and only just sane enough to be intrusted with the guidance of himself and his affairs. In reality he was none of those things, but a misfortune in early life, acting upon a singularly sensitive and impressionable nature, had decided his whole destiny. As a youth, at the university of Heidelberg, he shunned the society of the students, and, of an evening, instead of devoting himself to beer, tobacco, roaring songs and political theories, he loved to walk out and watch the sunset from the summit of the beautiful hills that enclose the valley of the Neckar. Returning home, on a May night, from one of these solitary rambles, his attention was arrested, as he passed through the outskirts of the town, by a fresh and melodious voice, proceeding from a window decked and entwined with flowers. The song was one of those wild and plaintive ditties, often of great antiquity, heard in remote mountain districts, seldom written, but orally transmitted from generation to generation. Surprised and charmed, Sigismund paused and listened; then he cast a curious glance into the room. A young girl was seated at a piano, and by the light of a lamp he distinguished her to be of great beauty. Thenceforward, every evening, on his return from his walks, the pensive student lingered at that window. He was seldom disappointed; most evenings the young girl was at her piano; and the song that at first had fascinated him was evidently her favourite. At last—how this came about it is immaterial to inquire—instead of pausing at the window, Sigismund went in at the door, and became a constant visitor to Michaële and her mother.

The dwelling of the widow and her child was humble, but elegant in its poverty. War, which had robbed them of a husband and father, had left them but a scanty pension for their support. Sigismund was as much attracted by the mother’s kind and graceful manners as he had been enchanted by the daughter’s bright eyes and sweet voice. He had lost his own mother when an infant; his father’s harsh and haughty character had repelled his affection. He found a home, congenial to his tastes and sympathies, in the secluded cottage in Heidelberg’s suburbs, and there he and Michaële formed plans of future happiness undisturbed by fear of obstacles to their union. But Michaële’s mother, who at first partook their hopes, could not repress forebodings of evil when she remembered that Sigismund was the heir of an ancient and wealthy family. Her fears proved too well founded. When Sigismund, on quitting the university, spoke to his father of his projects, he encountered an insurmountable opposition, and was compelled to postpone them. As often as he could escape from Hildesheim he hurried to Heidelberg, to pass a few days of mingled grief and joy. Michaële never complained; she had always smiles and loving words to welcome Sigismund, but in his absence and in secret she pined away. At last his father died. A week after his funeral the young count was at Heidelberg. It was too late. Michaële was given up by the physicians; three days afterwards she breathed her last. More than once, during those three days of cruel anguish, the dying girl made Sigismund play the melody that had been the origin of their acquaintance, and which they both passionately loved. Often, in happier times, they had sung it together, with joy and gratitude in their hearts. It was an air that Michaële had learned when a child, in the mountains of the Tyrol. It had fixed itself indelibly in her memory, and when she died, in Sigismund’s arms, the sweet melody was hovering on her lips.

There is something rather German than French in the strain of the early chapters of Un Héritage, but they are a mere prologue to the book, and are unheeded by the dramatist. After the death of his betrothed, Count Sigismund abandoned himself to the most passionate and despairing grief. He remained at Heidelberg with Michaële’s mother, who would not quit the spot where she had dwelt with her daughter. She did not long survive her bereavement. Sigismund followed her to the grave, and returned to Hildesheim, where he lived in complete retirement, avoiding intercourse with his neighbours. He would not be consoled, and lived alone with his sorrow. When this became calmer, he opened his piano and would have played the Tyrolese air he and his departed love had so often repeated. But in vain did he rack his memory and try every note of the instrument. The melody had fled, and would not return. It had departed with the soul of her from whom he had learned it. His long paroxysm of grief had utterly driven it from his recollection.

What does M. Sandeau now, but send his melancholy hero forth, a pilgrim over hill and dale, in quest of the lost melody so inextricably intertwined with the memory of her he had so tenderly and deeply loved. After innumerable efforts to seize the fugitive sounds, after bursts of impatience, anger, almost of frenzy, the enthusiastic Sigismund departed, wandering in search of an old song. The idea is fantastical; it may be deemed far-fetched; but it certainly is not unpoetical.

“He set out for the Tyrol; on the summit of the mountains, in the depths of the valleys, he listened to the songs of the shepherds: no voice repeated the air Michaële sung. After traversing Switzerland and Italy he returned to Germany, and his gentle, touching monomania then assumed a new form. He travelled on foot, like a poor student, listening to every fresh young voice that met his ear as he passed through the villages; in cities, on the public squares, when he saw a crowd gathered round a band of itinerant singers, he joined it, and stirred not from the place until the alfresco minstrels had exhausted their musical store. Whilst thus persisting in the pursuit of this Tyrolese air, which fled before him as did Ithaca from Ulysses, it will easily be understood that he paid little attention to the management of his estate. Before commencing his travels, which had lasted several years, he had installed in his castle two old cousins of his mother, Hedwige and Ulrica von Stolzenfels.”

Hereabouts M. Sandeau shelves sentiment and the pathetic, and strikes into a vein akin to satire, in which, as he showed us in Sacs et Parchemins, and some others of his books, he is by no means less happy. The two old Stolzenfels are a capital sketch. In the whole course of their lives, prolonged to a period it would be ungallant to guess at, they had had but one affection—for a scamp of a nephew, who had ruined them, but whom they still idolised, although hopeless of his conversion to better courses. For this handsome, reckless officer, whose innumerable follies were redeemed, in their partial eyes, by his good looks and prepossessing manners, they had emptied their purses, sold their diamonds, and left themselves with an income barely sufficient for their support. They would not have given a copper to a beggar; for Captain Frederick they would have stripped themselves of their last dollar, and have deemed themselves more than repaid by a visit from him in his fulldress of captain of hussars. When Sigismund offered them apartments in his castle, they gladly accepted them, at first merely as a comfortable home free of cost; but when they observed his absence of mind and his total neglect of his affairs, they formed other projects. By nature and habit haughty and sour to everybody but their beloved hussar, they forced themselves to be gentle and humble with Sigismund. Under pretence of watching over his interests, they gradually assumed the whole management of his house, and soon it might have been supposed that he was the guest and that they were his hostesses. When he set out upon his rambles, Frederick, who was in garrison in a neighbouring town, installed himself at the castle and disposed of everything as though it had been his patrimony, keeping horses, dogs, and huntsmen continually on their legs. The servants, accustomed to obey the two old ladies, and seeing that they obeyed their nephew, obeyed him likewise. Meanwhile Hedwige and Ulrica built castles in the air for their darling; or, it should rather be said, they grasped in imagination the one already built on the broad domain of Hildesheim. Sigismund, they were convinced, could not live long, leading the strange, wandering, unhappy life he did. Why should he not leave part of his property to Frederick? Why not all? How could it be better bestowed? The hussar, to do him justice, entered into none of their schemes. He drank Sigismund’s wine, thinned his preserves, knocked up his horses, and cared for little besides. When Sigismund came home for a few days, the captain made no change in his habits, and the count, for his part, in no way interfered with them.

To the infinite consternation of the old maids, there one day arrived at the castle a distant relative of Sigismund’s father, of whom they had heard nothing for many years, and whom they sincerely trusted had departed for a better world. Had a thunderbolt dropped into their aprons they could hardly have been more thunderstruck. Major Bildmann, who had always been rather a loose character, had just lost his last ducat at the gaming-table. In this extremity, Dorothy, his wife, could think of nothing better than to have recourse to Count Sigismund. She was careful not to speak to him of her husband’s irregularities, and concocted a little romance about faithless trustees and insolvent bankers, which Sigismund implicitly believed. He was touched by the tale of her misfortunes.

“My mother’s two cousins,” he said, after listening in silence, “occupy the right wing of the castle; come and install yourself with the major in the left wing. There will still be plenty of room for me.”

Dorothy took him at his word. A week afterwards she returned with Major Bildmann, and with little Isaac, an abominable brat whom she had forgotten to mention. This mattered not. Sigismund had again quitted the castle in pursuit of his chimera.

The consternation of a pair of magpies, disturbed in the plucking of a pigeon by the sudden swoop of a leash of sparrow-hawks, may give some idea of the feelings of Ulrica and Hedwige at this intrusion upon their territory. There was deadly hatred between the right wing and the left. When Sigismund returned home he did not observe this. The two maiden ladies certainly insinuated that the Bildmanns were no better than they should be; and the Bildmanns scrupled not to declare that the Stolzenfels were no great things; but Sigismund, whilst they spoke, was thinking of his Tyrolese air, and when they paused, he thanked them for having made his house the asylum of every domestic virtue.

Leaving the inmates of Hildesheim to their dissensions and illusions, and passing over a few chapters, we seek a contrast in an humble dwelling in Bavaria’s art-loving capital. It is the abode of Franz Müller, the musician, Edith his wife, and Spiegel their friend. Franz and Spiegel had been brought up together, and had passed the flower of their youth in poverty, working and hoping. Franz studied music, Spiegel was passionately fond of painting; art and friendship scared discouragement from their doors. For the space of three years they wandered on foot, knapsack on shoulder and staff in hand, through Germany and the Tyrol, stopping wherever the beauty of the country tempted them, and purveying, each in his own manner, for the wants of the community. Sometimes Spiegel painted a few portraits, at others Müller gave lessons in singing or on the piano; or when they arrived in a town on the eve of a great festival, he offered to play the church organ at the next day’s solemnity. Art and liberty was their motto. In the course of their wandering existence they visited the most beautiful valleys, the most picturesque mountains, opulent cities, splendid picture galleries, and amassed a treasure of reminiscences for future fireside conversation. They resolved never to marry, lest domestic cares should interfere with their enthusiastic pursuit of art. Spiegel kept his word, but Franz, in a little Tyrolese town, saw and loved Edith. In vain did the painter draw an alarming picture of the inconveniences of matrimony; Franz married, and thenceforward his friend deemed him lost to art. It was reserved for the gentle Edith to convince Spiegel of the contrary, and to tame his somewhat wild and vagabond nature. When first the newly-married pair settled at Munich, he seldom went to see them, but gradually his visits became more frequent, until one day, he hardly knew how, he found himself dwelling under their roof. In a small house Müller had taken, he had reserved a bedroom and studio for his friend. In that modest abode, situated outside Munich, between a front court whose walls disappeared under a drapery of vines and a little garden crowded with sweet flowers, happy years flew by. Happy, but not prosperous. At first Spiegel had painted pictures, with two or three of which he was tolerably satisfied, whilst Franz pronounced them masterpieces. But they found no purchasers, and the artist, once so ambitious, cheerfully resigned his hopes of fame, and gave drawing lessons. Müller had composed sonatas and a symphony; they were as unsuccessful as Spiegel’s pictures. Vanquished by the innumerable barriers that interpose between a poor and unknown musician and the public, he, too, submitted to give lessons. With strict economy they managed to live, but they laid by nothing; and Müller was often uneasy when he thought of the future, and of the two beautiful children Edith had born him.

“One evening, during Spiegel’s absence from Munich, Franz came home with a more care-laden brow than usual, and Edith sat down to the piano and sang a favourite air, which had more than once dispelled his momentary melancholy. The window was open, and her voice, fresh, pure, and sonorous, was audible outside the house. Franz listened, his gloom gradually softening into reverie, whilst Herman and Margaret rolled upon the carpet like kittens at play. That young woman, whose fair hair fell in abundant tresses upon her bare shoulders—those two fine children, joyously gambolling—the dreamer, whose hand sustained his thoughtful brow, composed a charming picture. Suddenly a stranger appeared, and paused upon the threshold of the apartment. He had entered so gently, that none had heard his steps or now observed his presence. Edith continued her song; the intruder listened motionless, and in apparent ecstasy, whilst silent tears coursed down his pale cheeks prematurely furrowed by pain or sorrow.”

At the stranger’s entreaty, Edith again and again repeated the song, which was from her native Tyrol. He listened with deep emotion. By ordinary persons he might have been deemed mad or intrusive, and received accordingly; but he had had the good fortune to fall amongst artists. He passed the evening with them, conversing as kindly and familiarly as though they had been old friends. He found means to draw out Franz, to make him speak of himself, his hopes and wishes, his discouragements and disappointments, his long-cherished desire for fame, his uneasiness about the prospects of his children. Then he asked him to play a piece of his own composition. Müller played one of his best sonatas, to which the stranger listened with the attention of a judge who will not lightly decide. The piece played out, he seemed thoughtful, but said nothing. Poor Müller, who had expected applause, consoled himself by thinking that the eccentric stranger did not understand music. Instead of praising the fine composition he had just heard, the unbidden guest, so kindly welcomed, turned to Edith and asked her for a copy of the Tyrolese air. She had never seen it noted, she said, and doubted that it ever had been, but Franz would note it for him. “Most willingly” was the reply of the good-tempered artist, who could not repress a smile at the ill success of his own performance. In a very few minutes he had covered a sheet of music-paper with spots and scratches. Edith graciously offered it to the stranger. He seized it with an expression of grateful joy, glanced hastily over it, pressed Edith’s hand to his lips, cast an affectionate glance at the children, and left the house, as he had entered it, swift and noiseless as a shadow. He had not mentioned his name; his kind hosts had not inquired it; they never saw him again.

On a certain evening, Count Sigismund returned to Hildesheim Castle, after one of his long absences, his countenance lighted up with a mysterious joy. He spoke to no one, put aside the servants who crowded round him, and shut himself up in his apartment. Soon his piano was heard resounding under his fingers; he at last had found the air he so long had sought. But he did not long enjoy his victory. He had worn himself out in pursuit of his mania. One morning, subsequent to a night during great part of which the piano had been continually heard, a servant entered his room. Sigismund was still seated at the instrument, one hand resting on the keys, the other hanging by his side, his eyes closed, his mouth half open and smiling. He seemed to sleep, but he was dead.

There were present at the reading of Count Sigismund von Hildesheim’s last will and testament the two ladies Stolzenfels; Major Bildmann, a brokendown gambler of braggadocio air and vinous aspect; his wife Dorothy, whose thin pale lips, and sharp, hooked nose, gave her no small resemblance to a bird of prey; and their son Isaac, a horrible urchin with the profile of a frog and a head of scrubby white hair, who, having been ordered by his mother to behave decorously and look sorrowful, had given his features a sulky twist, which considerably augmented their naturally evil expression. The opposed camps of Bildmann and Stolzenfels observed each other with dislike and distrust. After some waiting, the gallop of a horse was heard, and Captain Frederick entered, whip in hand, and his boots covered with dust. All who were interested being thus assembled, Master Gottlieb broke the seals of the will, which the count had deposited in his keeping a month before his death. Divested of customary formalities and of preliminary compliments to the family, the contents of the document were in substance as follows:—

“My mother’s two cousins, Hedwige and Ulrica von Stolzenfels, have at all times shown me the most disinterested affection. To leave me more leisure and liberty, they have kindly taken the management of my house, and have superintended, with unceasing zeal and activity, that of my estates. Frederick, by his youth and gaiety, has enlivened my dwelling. To him I am indebted for the only cheerful moments I for many years have known. Since their establishment under my roof, the Stolzenfels have proved themselves my affectionate and devoted friends; their conduct has excited my admiration and respect, and I desire they should know that I duly appreciate it.”

About this time Hedwige and Ulrica seemed to grow several inches taller, and cast a triumphant glance at the major and Dorothy. As to Frederick, who, since the reading began, had been sketching with the point of his horse-whip, upon the dusty surface of one of his boots, a likeness of Master Gottlieb, he gave the last touch to his work, and commenced upon the other foot the portrait of Isaac. The notary continued.

“The straightforward frankness and integrity of Major Bildmann have been, I here declare, a great consolation to me, after the deceptions of all kinds that I experienced in my youth. Mrs Bildmann has vied with my mother’s cousins in zeal and devotedness. The complete absence of all self-interested views has given a noble and affecting character to their rivalry. In return for so much attention and care, they neither asked nor expected other reward than my affection. The Bildmanns have an equal right with the Stolzenfels to my gratitude.”

This became puzzling. A division of the property was the most natural inference. Master Gottlieb, dubious where to seek the rising sun, smiled benignly on all around. Urged by the impatient hussar, he resumed the reading of the will.

“At Munich, at No 9, in the street of the Armourers, lives a young musician, Franz Müller by name. He has hitherto contrived, by hard work, by giving lessons, to support his wife and children, who tenderly love him. But Müller is no ordinary musician; and his genius, to develop itself, needs but leisure. It is to him, Franz Müller, residing at Munich, at No 9, in the street of the Armourers, that I bequeath my entire property.”

It is highly improbable that Master Gottlieb’s peaceable parlour had ever before been the scene of such an uproar as this paragraph of the will occasioned. The major, Dorothy, and the two old maids, were for attacking the document on the ground of the testator’s insanity; but Frederick, who could not restrain his laughter at this eccentric close to an eccentric life, firmly opposed this, and the bullying major quailed before his resolute tone and mien. Franz Müller not being present, Master Gottlieb no longer troubled himself to smile on anybody; but, in an authoritative tone, called attention to the closing passages of the will.

“Desiring,” the singular document proceeded, “to insure, after my death, the welfare of my farmers and servants, which I feel that I have neglected too much during my life, I make it a condition of my bequest that Franz Müller shall inhabit the castle for nine months of every year, and dismiss none of my people. As to my dear relatives, the Stolzenfels and the Bildmanns, nothing is to be changed in their manner of life, and they are to inhabit the castle as heretofore. Wishing to insure their independence, it is my will that Müller shall annually pay to Ulrica von Stolzenfels one thousand florins; to Hedwige von Stolzenfels one thousand florins; to Frederick von Stolzenfels one thousand florins; to Major Bildmann two thousand florins, with reversion, in case of his death, to Dorothy Bildmann. And that he should take from his first year’s revenue a sum of ten thousand florins, the interest on which is to be allowed to accumulate until the majority of Isaac, to whom interest and capital are then to be paid over.

“I give to Frederick von Stolzenfels the free use of my horses and dogs, with right of chase over my estates.

“I annex to the present will a Tyrolese air; I desire that it may be engraved on my tomb and serve as my epitaph.”

After listening to this strange document, which they declared worthy to have proceeded from a lunatic asylum, the ladies had no appetite for Master Gottlieb’s collation. The major would gladly have tried the contents of the cobwebbed bottles, but his wife dragged him away. Frederick sprang upon his horse and galloped off, taking with him upon his boots the portraits of Isaac and the notary. This functionary, finding himself deserted by his guests, called in his head clerk to help him to drink the health of the absent legatee.

Poor, well-meaning, simple-minded Count Sigismund would have turned in his grave had he known all the mischief and unhappiness, envy, hatred, and discord, of which his extraordinary will sowed the seed and gave the signal. The journey from Munich to Hildesheim was, for Franz and Edith, a series of enchanting dreams. There was but one drawback to their joy; Spiegel had refused to accompany them. “No more drudgery, no more lessons!” Müller had enthusiastically exclaimed, when a letter from Master Gottlieb, expressing a hope of the continuance of the Hildesheim patronage, and enclosing a copy of the will, tied with blue ribbons, confirmed the intimation of good fortune he had already gleaned from a newspaper paragraph. “The world belongs to us; we are kings of the earth! You shall paint pictures, I will compose symphonies and operas; we will fill Germany with our fame.” And he formed innumerable projects. Their life thenceforward was to be a fairy scene, a delightful and perpetual alternation of refined enjoyments and artistic toil. Edith partook her husband’s enthusiasm; Spiegel at first said nothing, and when he did speak he gave his friends to understand that he could not share their prosperity. He did not like new faces; he preferred the cottage at Munich to the abode of a castle, and was proof against all entreaties. Franz and Edith secretly resolved to buy the little house as a gift to their friend. In nine months they would return to see him, and perhaps, when they again set out for Hildesheim, he would consent to accompany them. Whilst preparing for departure, and burning useless papers, Franz laid his hand upon the only symphony he had found time to write. Carefully turning over its leaves, with a disdainful air, he was about to toss it into the fire, when Spiegel seized his arm and rescued the composition.

Müller had written to the Hildesheim steward to announce his arrival, and to forbid all pomp, ceremony, and public rejoicings on the occasion. He thought his instructions too literally carried out, when, upon reaching, some hours after nightfall, the huge gates of the castle, all decorated with stags’ horns, boars’ tusks, and wolves’ heads, he found no servant to receive him, not a light on the walls or in the windows, not a torch in the gloomy avenues of the park. After the postilion had cracked his whip and wound his horn for the better part of half an hour, a glimmering light appeared, a clanking of keys was heard, and the gates, slowly opening, disclosed the sour visage of Wurm the steward, muttering maledictions on the untimely visitors. Upon learning who they were, and at the rather sharp injunction of Müller, who was exasperated at the delay, he made what haste he could to awaken the servants, and ushered his new master and mistress into their apartments—immense rooms, nearly bare of furniture; for, even during Sigismund’s lifetime, the Stolzenfels and Bildmann, taking advantage of his frequent absence of mind, and from the castle, had stripped that part of the edifice he had reserved for his own use. Edith mentally contrasted the vast gloomy halls with her snug abode at Munich, and thought it would have been but kind had the ladies Stolzenfels and Mrs Bildmann been there to receive her. But a night’s rest, a brilliant morning, and the view of the immense lawns and rich foliage of the park, effaced the first unpleasant impression, and, having previously sent to know when they could be received, she and her husband presented themselves in the apartments of Hedwige and Ulrica. On their entrance, the two old ladies, who were seated in the embrasure of a window, half rose from their seats, resumed them almost immediately, and pointed to chairs with a gesture rather disdainful than polite. Poor Edith, who, in the innocence of her heart, had expected smiling countenance and a friendly welcome, felt herself frozen by their vinegar aspect. She turned red, then pale, and knew not what to say. Müller, without noticing the ladies’ looks, recited a little speech he had prepared for the occasion, expressive of his gratitude to Count Sigismund for having bequeathed him, in addition to his estates, his amiable family. He begged and insisted that they would change nothing in their mode of life, &c. &c. Why should they change anything? was Ulrica’s sharp and haughty reply; the count had left them by his will what he had given them in his lifetime; they had their rights and asked nothing beyond them. Hedwige pitched it in rather a lower key. Their tastes were very simple. They had sought neither applause nor luxury at Hildesheim. Count Sigismund had always put his carriage and horses at their disposal. Müller hoped they would continue to make use of them. They were lovers of solitude, Hedwige continued, of silence and meditation. With Count Sigismund’s consent they had planted a quickset hedge round a little corner of the park—not more than two or three acres. It would pain them, she confessed, to give up this little enclosure, whither they repaired to indulge their evening reveries. Franz eagerly assured them that none should disturb them in their retreat. Having obtained these assurances, and repelled, with chilling stiffness, Edith’s warm-hearted advances, the amiable spinsters relapsed into silence, which all their visitors’ efforts were insufficient to induce them to break, until the upset of a table of old china, occasioned by the gambols of Herman and a black cat, effectually roused them from their assumed apathy. The Müllers beat a retreat and went to call on Major Bildmann and his wife, whom they surprised in the midst of a domestic squabble—a circumstance of itself sufficient, had others been wanting, to secure them a surly reception. Franz’s mild and gentle bearing encouraged the major to assume his most impertinent tone, whilst his falcon-faced spouse ventured offensive inuendoes as to the real motives of Count Sigismund’s will—inuendoes whose purport was utterly unsuspected by the pure-hearted Müllers. Here, too, there was an enclosure in the case, where the major cultivated the flowers his dear Dorothy preferred, and where the infant Isaac loved to disport himself. As an old soldier, Major Bildmann added, he loved the chase, which was the image of war. The count had allowed him the range of his preserves. Müller eagerly confirmed him in all his privileges. On quitting the Bildmann wing he found Wurm waiting for him to pass the servants in review. He made them an affecting little speech, by which they seemed very little affected. Then Wurm named them. There were Mrs Bildmann’s waitingmaid and the major’s valet, the servants of the ladies Stolzenfels, the cooks of the right and left wings, Isaac’s nurse, Major Bildmann’s butler, Captain Frederick’s grooms and huntsmen, &c. &c. Müller inquired for his own servants—those that had been Count Sigismund’s. They were all before him. The two wings had swallowed up the body. Wurm felt secretly surprised at a musician’s needing servants when the count had done without them. Müller dryly informed him that Count Sigismund’s servants were his, and that he made him responsible for their attention to his service. He said nothing to Edith of this strange scene, and tried to dissipate the painful impressions she had brought away from their two visits, by praising the major’s military frankness and the aristocratic bearing of the sisters. But he was at a loss to explain why the apartments of the Stolzenfels and Bildmanns were richly and sumptuously furnished and decorated, whilst those the owners of the castle occupied exhibited little beside bare walls. Meanwhile the right and left wings, between whom there had been a sort of hollow alliance since the reading of the will, assembled in conclave. Never was there such a voiding of venom. The self-same idea had occurred to all these disappointed and charitable relations. Edith’s beauty at once explained the count’s frequent absence from home and his unjust will. She was the syren that had led him astray. Little Margaret was his very image. It was a crying shame, a burning scandal. The old maids clasped their hands and rolled their eyes. Ulrica was for attacking the will on the ground of immoral influence and captivation. The major had always been of the same opinion, but Frederick would not agree, and nothing should induce the major to fight a member of his family. The fact was, notwithstanding his Bobadil airs, Major Bildmann had very little fancy for fighting with anybody. The council broke up, all its members declaring they would quit the castle sullied by the presence of these adventurers—all fully resolved to remain and to wait the course of events.

We must compress into a few lines the leading incidents of the second half of Un Héritage. Müller had not been a month at the castle, when great annoyances succeeded to the petty disagreeables he had encountered on his first arrival. Master Wolfgang the Hildesheim lawyer was his evil genius. There was a certain lawsuit, that had already lasted through three generations, in which, as Count Sigismund’s heir, he found himself entangled. The whole matter in dispute was but half an acre of land, which Müller would gladly have abandoned, but Wolfgang proved to him, as clear as day, the impropriety of so doing, the disrespect to the memory of the late count, and so forth—and, the most cogent argument of all, he exhibited to him the sum total of the costs he would have to pay if he admitted himself vanquished. It was an alarming figure, and ready money was not abundant with Müller, whom the Stolzenfels and Bildmanns dunned for their first year’s annuity and for the legacy to little Isaac; who had to pay for extensive repairs of the castle, for the costly mausoleum which, in the first effusion of his gratitude, he had ordered for Count Sigismund, and various other charges. So the lawsuit went on—the delight of Master Wolfgang, and a daily drain upon Müller’s purse. The harvest was bad, the farmers asked for time, and grumbled when worse terms than their own were proposed to them. Careless Count Sigismund had spoiled all around him by letting them do as they liked, and Müller’s greater activity and vigilance, and his attempts to check fraud and peculation, speedily earned him the ill-will of the whole neighbourhood. Gentle-hearted Edith, anxious to expend a portion of her sudden wealth in improving the condition of the poor, was soon disgusted by their ingratitude, and was utterly at a loss to understand the chilling looks, ironical smiles, and mysterious whisperings of which she was the object whenever she went beyond the limits of her own park, to which she soon confined herself. Her servants showed no sense of the kindness with which she treated them; they, too, had adopted and spread the vile rumours first set abroad by the malice of the two vixen spinsters and of the Bildmanns, with respect to the count’s real motives for bequeathing his estates to the Müllers. Fortunately it was impossible for Edith, who was purity itself, ever to suspect the real cause of the ill-will shown to her. Captain Frederick, when his regimental duties permitted him to visit the castle, discovered at a first interview, with a rake’s usual clear-sightedness in such matters, the utter falseness of the injurious reports in circulation. He became a constant visitor to the Müllers, and was in fact their only friend and resource in the solitude in which they lived; for the neighbouring squires, the hobereaus of the country around, had not returned Müller’s visits, nor taken any notice of him beyond attacking him at law; some upon a question of water-power, which he had innocently diminished by winding a stream that ran through his grounds, others for damage done to their fields, by the trespasses of the Hildesheim hounds, followed by Captain Frederick and his huntsmen. Nor was this all—there was discord yet nearer home: Müller’s children, having trespassed upon the Bildmanns’ private garden, were brutally ejected by the major, whom Müller angrily reproached. The major bullied and insisted upon satisfaction, which Franz, exasperated by a long series of annoyances, was perfectly willing to give him, and a duel would have ensued had not the major, when he saw that the musician, as he contemptuously called him, meant to fight, sent an apology. It was accepted, but next day Müller ordered his three gardeners to root up and clear away the hedges of the Stolzenfels and Bildmann enclosures. The knaves remonstrated and finally refused, and, when dismissed, they refused to go, alleging that the late count’s will deprived Müller of the power of sending them away. More work for the lawyers. Müller sent for labourers, and the hedges disappeared. Notices of action from the ladies Stolzenfels and Major Bildmann. The villain Wolfgang chuckled and rubbed his hands, upon which he had now six lawsuits for Müller’s account. In the count’s crack-brained will, drawn up by himself, without legal advice, the letter was everywhere at variance with the spirit. Müller’s apartment was encumbered with law papers; he could not sit down to his piano, to seek oblivion of his cares in his beloved art, without being interrupted by Wolfgang’s parchment physiognomy. As for composition, it was out of the question: he had no time for it, nor was his harassed mind attuned to harmony. He became morose and fanciful, jealous of the hussar’s attention to Edith, who, for her part, grieved to see her husband so changed, and sighed for the cottage at Munich, where Spiegel, meanwhile, had worked hard, had sold some pictures, had paid the rent that Franz, in the midst of his troubles, had forgotten to remit to him, and had purchased, with the fruits of his own toil and talent, the little dwelling of which, when their prosperity first burst upon them, the Müllers had planned to make him a present. The contrast was striking between anticipation and realisation.

No schoolboy ever more eagerly longed for “breaking-up” day, than did Müller for the termination of his nine month’s compulsory abode at Hildesheim. It came at last, and he and Edith and their children were free to quit the scene of strife and weariness, and to return to Munich and to Spiegel. On making up the accounts of the year, Müller found that, out of the whole princely revenue of the estates, he had but a thousand florins left. He had lived little better than at Munich (much less happily), and had committed no extravagance; annuities, legacies, repairs, monument, did not account for half the sum expended; all the rest had gone in law expenses. There remained about enough to pay travelling charges to Munich. Müller sent for Wolfgang, forbade him to begin any new lawsuit in his absence, and departed. He found a warm welcome at the cottage. Spiegel received his friends with open arms, and three happy months passed rapidly away. Upon the last day, when Edith and Franz were looking ruefully forward to their return to Hildesheim’s grandeur and countless disagreeables, Spiegel insisted upon their accompanying him to the performance of a new symphony, concerning which the musical world of Munich was in a state of considerable excitement. The piece, it was mysteriously related, was from the pen of a deceased composer, was of remarkable originality and beauty, and had been casually discovered amongst a mass of old papers. The concert-room was crowded. At the first bars of the music, Müller thought he recognised familiar sounds, and presently every doubt was dissipated. It was his own composition—the despised symphony he had been about to destroy, but which Spiegel had rescued. The audience, at the close of each part, were rapturous in their applause. When the finale had been played, the composer’s name was called for with acclamations. The leader of the orchestra advanced, and proclaimed that of Franz Müller.

A few days later, Master Gottlieb the notary received a letter from the lord of Hildesheim. “According to the stipulations of the will,” Müller wrote, “I am bound to inhabit the castle of Hildesheim for nine months in the year. I remain at Munich and forfeit my right to the property.” Forthwith began a monster lawsuit, one of the finest Master Wolfgang had known in the whole course of his experience. It was between the Bildmanns and the Stolzenfels. It lasted ten years. The major and Dorothy died before it was decided, Isaac fell from a tree, when stealing fruit, and broke his neck. The Stolzenfels triumphed. The hussar redoubled his extravagance. The estate, already encumbered with law expenses, was sold to pay his debts. Ulrica and Hedwige died in poverty.

It ought surely not to have been difficult for practised dramatists to construct a pleasant and piquant comedy out of the leading idea and plentiful incidents of this amusing novel, which is by no means the less to be esteemed because it boldly deviates from the long-established routine, which demands a marriage as the wind-up of every book of the class. It is much more common in France than in England for play-writers to seek their subjects in novels of the day, and it is then customary, often indispensable, to take great liberties both with plot and characters, and sometimes to retain little besides the main idea of the book. Upon that idea there is of course no prohibition against improving, but authors who vary it for the worse, manifestly do themselves a double injury, because the public, familiar with the merits of the book, are disgusted to find it deteriorated in the play. They look for something better, not worse, in the second elaboration of the subject, and certainly they have a right to do so, and to be dissatisfied when the contrary is the case. In the present instance, a most unpleasant play has been based upon a good novel. In Emile Augier, M. Sandeau has taken to himself a dangerous collaborateur. He should have dramatised Un Héritage unassisted—as he dramatised, with such happy results, his novel of Mademoiselle de la Seiglière. That is a most successful instance of the French style of adaptation to the stage. There, too, as in the present case, great liberties have been taken. In two out of the four acts, scarcely anything is to be traced of the novel, which has as tragical an ending as the comedy has a cheerful and pleasant one. But the whole tenor of the play was genial and sympathetic. In the Pierre de Touche, as the present comedy is called, the reverse is the case, and no wonder that its cynical and exaggerated strain jarred on the feelings of the usually quiet audience at the Française, and elicited hisses rarely heard within those decorous walls, where silence and empty benches are the only tokens the public usually give of its disapprobation. From our acquaintance with M. Sandeau’s writings, we do not think that he would of himself have perpetrated such a repulsive picture of human nature as he has produced in combination with M. Augier. They have obliterated or distorted most of the best features of the novel. In Un Héritage, the character of Franz Müller is at once pleasing and natural. He is not represented as perfect—he has his failings and weaknesses like any other mortal, and they are exhibited in the book, although we have not, in the outline we have traced of it, had occasion to give them prominence. But his heart is sound to the last. Wealth may momentarily bewilder, but it does not pervert him. He is true to his affections, and has the sense and courage to accept honourable toil as preferable to a fortune embittered by anxiety and dissension. The reader cannot help respecting him, and feeling pained at his countless vexations and annoyances. No such sympathy is possible with the Franz of the play, who is the most contemptible of mortals. A more unpleasant character was probably never introduced into any book, and it is untrue to nature, for it has not a single redeeming point. The authors have personified and concentrated in it the essences of heartlessness, selfishness, and of the most paltry kind of pride. Somewhat indolent, and with a latent spark of envy in his nature, the needy artist, converted into a millionaire, suddenly displays his evil instincts. Their growth is as supernaturally rapid as that of noxious weeds in a tropical swamp. The play opens in the cottage at Munich. Edith, Franz’s cousin, is not yet married to him. An orphan, she had been brought up by his father, at whose death Franz took charge of her. She was then a child, and Franz and Spiegel hardly perceived that she had become a woman until they were reminded of it by the passion with which she inspired both of them. Spiegel, a noble character, generously sacrifices to his friend’s happiness his own unsuspected love. Edith (the names are changed in the play, but we retain them to avoid confusion) is affianced to her cousin, and on the eve of marriage. Just then comes the fortune. The authors have substituted for the Bildmanns and Stolzenfels an elderly spendthrift baron and an intriguing margravine and her pretty daughter. The love passages in the life of the deceased count are cancelled, and he is represented as an eccentric old gentleman, passionately fond of music, and cherishing a great contempt for his very distant relations, to whom he leaves only a moderate annuity. They have scarcely become acquainted with Franz when they discern the weak points in his character and conspire to profit by them. Treated with cutting contempt, as a mere parvenu, by the haughty nobility of Bavaria, Franz’s pride boils over, and he consents to be adopted by the baron and converted into the Chevalier de Berghausen, at the immoderate price of the payment of the old roué nobleman’s debts. He finds Spiegel a wearisome Mentor; to his diseased vision Edith appears awkward contrasted with the courtly dames he now encounters. Their marriage is postponed from week to week, by reason of the journeys and other steps necessary to establish Franz in the ranks of the nobility of the land. Titled, and with armorial bearings that date from the crusades, how much more fitting an alliance, the baron perfidiously suggests, would be that of the margravine, who graciously condescends to intimate her possible acceptance of him as a son-in-law. We are shown the gangrene of selfishness and vanity daily spreading its corruption through his soul. He quarrels with his honest, generous friend, slights his affianced bride, and finally falls completely into the clutches of the intriguers who beset him. His very dog, poor faithful Spark, (his dog and Spiegel’s)—which, as the painter, with tears in his eyes and a cheek pale with anger and honest indignation, passionately reminds him—had slept on his feet and been his comfort and companion in adversity—is killed by his order because he did not appreciate the difference between castle and cottage, but took his ease upon the dainty satin sofas at Hildesheim as upon the rush mat at Munich. Edith, compelled to despise the man she had loved, preserves her womanly dignity, and breaks off the projected marriage just as the last glimmer of honour and affection are on the point of being extinguished in her cousin’s bosom by the dictates of a despicable vanity. The curtain falls, leaving him in the hands of his hollow friends, and allowing the spectator to foresee the union of Edith and Spiegel. Not one kindly touch of natural feeling redeems Franz’s faithlessness to his friend, and to his love his ingratitude—for he would many a day have been hungry, if not houseless, but for the generous toil of Spiegel, who had devoted himself to the drudgery of teaching, that Franz might have leisure to mature the genius for which his partial friend gave him exaggerated credit—his false pride and his ridiculous vanity. He is left rich, but miserable. That which he has wilfully lost can be dispelled neither by the enjoyments wealth procures, nor by the false friends who hang on him but to plunder him. In their vindication, the authors insist on “the terrible morality” of their denouement. We admit it, but do not the less persist in the opinion that their play, although by no means devoid of wit and talent, leaves a most painful and disagreeable impression upon the mind. It presents the paradoxical and complicated phenomenon of a comedy which has been censured by press and public and yet continues to be performed; which draws tolerably numerous audiences, and is invariably received with symptoms of disapprobation.

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